


April Showers Bring May Flowers

by cuddlesome



Category: Pocket Monsters | Pokemon (Main Video Game Series), Pocket Monsters | Pokemon - All Media Types, Pocket Monsters: Sword & Shield | Pokemon Sword & Shield Versions
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Blood, Body Horror, Drabble Sequence, Eldegoss Seeds As a Plot Device, F/M, Flowers, Hanahaki Disease, Height Differences, Hurt/Comfort, Not Actually Unrequited Love, Rain, Swimming
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-03
Updated: 2021-01-04
Packaged: 2021-03-09 20:21:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 2,951
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27802201
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cuddlesome/pseuds/cuddlesome
Summary: The idea that Nessa will never feel the same way as him takes root inside of Milo. Literally.
Relationships: Rurina | Nessa/Yarrow | Milo
Comments: 13
Kudos: 34





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For the uninformed, [here's the TV Tropes page about hanahaki disease.](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/HanahakiDisease) Milo has a bunch of flower-themed pokémon and is into floristry so it feels really appropriate the first fic I write with this trope is about him.
> 
> Also, can we as a fandom talk about eldegoss seeds more? I feel like it's pretty plausible part of the reason Milo is so buff is because he has herbal supplements literally falling off of his pokémon. Are there muscle-building proteins in eldegoss seeds? Could one give you hanahaki disease? Who's to say?

Milo turns Nessa down for going swimming in Hulbury for many reasons of varying legitimacy.

It's harvest season. His dubwool ewe is about to lay an egg. The egg hatched, now there's a lamb to take care of. He has too many gym challenges. It's hot. It's cold. He's feeling sick, what about tomorrow? But tomorrow never comes.

After their latest exhibition match, she confronts him in the locker room. The hard look in her eyes makes him sure she won't take any more excuses, so there's only the truth.

"I can't swim," he confesses.

She softens, just a little, so little most people probably wouldn't notice, but he does. "You can't?"

"I never learned."

It's the second biggest obstacle in the way to him accepting her invitations. The little creek running through Turffield isn't good for much more than splashing around in.

The first obstacle, which he's even less willing to admit, is that he thinks he may be in love with Nessa.

Her lips curl into a little smile. "Why didn't you just say so? I can teach you."

Milo plays with one end of his kerchief. "Oh, I—"

"Meet me on the beach near the second Galar mine at dawn on your next day off. I'll give you your first lesson." She turns away and leaves with a swish of her elaborately-styled hair before he can reply. 

Milo's gaze drifts down her back to her nylon-and-spandex-clad bum and her legs—oh, Arceus, those legs—before he averts his eyes. 

For a long while he simply wondered if he's infatuated, if it’s all lust. Nessa is a stunning woman, everyone knows it; one of her careers is built around her beauty, after all.

He sees her image in advertisements and on magazine covers and wonders if he's just like one of her more fanatic supporters. The swimsuit editions of _Galarie_ that feature Nessa bring out reactions that make him feel ashamed. He sees her in her gym uniform all the time, but something about even less fabric and the way the shots are angled and lit stirs up heat inside him.

The photographers really like to emphasise her long, finely muscled legs. And why wouldn't they? They're gorgeous. So are her sinewy swimmer's arms, and her toned middle, and her cute little buttocks that would fit so well in his hands—

And then Milo feels like a pervert and he speed walks past the digital billboards in Wyndon or tosses aside the magazines he’d surreptitiously ordered and heads for a cold shower. She's his coworker and his friend. He shouldn't drool over her like a piece of meat.

He’s not giving himself or her enough credit by wondering if he’s just attracted to her body. After all, Nessa's most appealing qualities are all in her character.

For one thing, her training style aligns with his own. They both raise up pokémon in their native environments with an eye for what they like, whether that's providing lots of rocks for drednaw to chomp on or tossing an eldegoss up in the air so she can float on the wind. More than once he sees her on the docks in Hulbury rubbing sea moss gel into her goldeen and arrokuda's scales or polishing drednaw's carapace. There's always a concentrated knit to her brow as she scrubs. He hides his grin in his kerchief as he thinks of shearing his wooloos or pruning his many flowering pokémon. That sort of care is often handed off to nurseries or hired caretakers, but they're way too close to their pokémon to put those responsibilities on someone else. 

They would probably make great parents... if they ever... not that they would—

Anyway, he doesn't like the idea of being Nessa's rival, but he loves the passion in her voice when she says it. He partly denies her only to see her façade of calm break, to have her poke him in the chest with her index finger, lean in close, and assert that yes, like it or not they're in competition with each other. She's so determined to overcome him she gets riled when he points out that she's already the second leader in the gym challenge and has him beaten in that respect.

Even when she's doing a leisure activity like fishing, she has a resoluteness to her that he admires. She looks at the water like she can somehow determine the behaviour of the capricious pokémon within. From what he's heard from others and seen firsthand of her catches, it almost seems like she does. Like she understands the creatures equal parts dangerous and beautiful from the depths. It makes sense, doesn't it? She's a lot like them.

The morning that they arranged to meet—or, rather, that Nessa had arranged for them to meet—Milo eats his usual pot of yoghurt topped with combee honey, crushed pecha berries, and eldegoss seeds for breakfast. As he takes his very last bite, one of the seeds goes down the wrong pipe; he's too caught up in thinking about Nessa. He chokes and pounds on his chest, eyes watering. After a moment his body settles, but he still feels... off. Weird. There's no time to worry about it, he has to go.


	2. Chapter 2

It's raining in Hulbury. It's nothing too chaotic, but the streets are totally deserted and the corviknight carrying the taxi he's in grumbles loudly about getting drenched. Milo knows for a fact his gossifleur would close his petals and the eldegosses would hide away entirely if they were out in weather like this.

He finds Nessa at the designated spot, fishing while she waits for him. After landing and releasing an ornery magikarp, she sets her pole aside and greets him. He's not used to seeing her with her hair up and without makeup, but finds that he likes her either way.

She assures Milo that as long as there isn't any lightning and they stick close to the shore they should be safe. She picks up a diveball from beside where she shoved her clothes securely under a rock shelf jutting out from beside the mine.

He takes off his shirt and shoes and puts them in the same spot. That leaves him in the floral-print swimming trunks he realises only now might look a bit silly next to Nessa's one-piece swimming costume. It's elegantly simple, black with a few blue accents, doubtless a gift from one of her sponsors.

She wades in until the water laps at her lower belly, which leaves him in up to his chest when he follows. He mops his soaked hair out of his eyes and flinches when he sees her glancing back over her shoulder at him. She half-smiles at him.

He's glad the water is so cold. It mitigates the blush that he knows stains his fair skin. He knows about his... assets, of course, he's had enough overly-touchy fans make a go at his chest and arms to be aware of them, but he doesn't know how much Nessa notices his body.

She's around other lissome models all the time. A stocky farmer can't hold much appeal, muscular or not.

He's so worried about what she thinks of him with his shirt off he almost misses her first instructions on how to float on his back. They're starting with the very basics.

"A pool would be better, but the local one's closed for maintenance," she comments, casual.

Milo hesitates. "Nessa, is this safe?"

"I'm lifeguard certified," she says with a proud look. "Between my pokémon and I you'll be safer than a kangaskhan's babe."

"Okay," he says, smiling softly. "That makes me feel a lot better."

She tosses the diveball into the air and releases her goldeen, who gives him a sidelong glance. He waves at the pokémon before attempting to follow Nessa's directions, laying down in the water and trying to keep enough air in his chest to keep him afloat. Between the rain and the waves he feels like he's going to get washed out to sea at any moment.

"I'm going to spot you." So saying, Nessa puts her hands underwater to support his lower back. 

The contact makes his heart pound. The touch is light, casual. She probably touches her gym trainers the same way. It's nothing.

He does it fine with help, but during his first attempt to do it alone he sinks like a stonjourner. And the second. And the sixth.

The goldeen stares at him with what he can only imagine is judgement.

Nessa holds his back again. "You're thinking too hard about it. Don't turn your head so much." 

He'd been turning his head to avoid looking at her so close to him. Now he keeps it level and can see her belly and her breasts and her face. After that he loses his concentration and sinks underwater even with her help.

"Come on, you can do it," Nessa says when he reemerges.

She looks down at him with fierce determination. Her deep blue eyes seem to almost sparkle with it.

"You have beautiful eyes," Milo blurts.

"What?"

"I was just saying the... sky's... so beautiful."

Nessa looks up at the storm clouds overhead as he winces.

He swallows a lot of rainwater and seawater that day. Maybe that's what causes the seed to put down roots deep in his chest. Or maybe it's his own insecurity that makes it grow. Either way, the result is the same.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Who's that pokémon? It's crippling self-doubt!


	3. Chapter 3

Once he can actually float for longer than a few seconds, she teaches him some basic strokes. He comes back for more lessons the next week and the week after that. 

She keeps touching him to guide him into the positions and talking to him with that resolute voice that really seems to believe in him. He feels like a sealeo the way that he splashes around more than anything but she seems to see some progress.

His love or infatuation or whatever it is grows in his chest along with the now-seedling, though he isn't aware of that yet. 

It's raining again today. It doesn't matter. He's going to tell her how he feels.

She doesn’t see the gesture for what it is when he presents her with flowers and he supposes it wouldn’t be fair to expect she would; he’s given her bouquets for years without any sort of romantic inklings attached to them. Every gym leader in Galar has received flowers or tea or fabric spun from wooloo wool and eldegoss cotton from him at some point or another. Soft scents, soft flavors, soft feelings. 

The roses are blue as half of a roselia’s signature pair thanks to putting their stems in water with dye. Milo admires Nessa’s contented expression as she leans forward to smell them. The rainfall brings out the fresh aroma of the blossoms, clashing with the harsh scent of the harbor.

She smiles and holds the flowers to one side to hug him with her other arm. "They're beautiful."

He hugs her back, relishing in how his hands fit into the small of her back and the slight give of her chest against his cheek. His heart heart pounds so fast it could burst.

He has to tell her.

He can't tell her.

Milo's love confession sticks in his throat, along with something else. He manages to swallow it down, but it's still there, tickling in his esophagus.

"They're—a thank you. For helping me learn to swim." Milo smiles but kicks himself on the inside.

She doesn’t love him. Not like he loves her. She can’t.

He’s back home in Turffield, out in the fields, jersey still the slightest bit damp with rainwater when he begins to cough. Something soft and slippery sticks to the back of his tongue. He reaches into his mouth and pulls out a petal velvety and yellow as a gossifleur’s. He holds it up under the sunlight, wondering if he's mistaken.

Gossifleur petals can be medicinal or poisonous depending on a variety of factors—the pokémon’s habitat and diet, primarily—and there’s no way of knowing which just by looking. At least his body rejected it if it's dangerous.

The thought that it might have blown into his mouth via the wind is quickly dashed. He gags as he hacks up another, then another, some yellow, some red. They flutter to the ground, shiny with saliva.


	4. Chapter 4

Milo considers going to the doctor, but then he reflects on just how mental he'll sound when he schedules his appointment and describes his symptoms. It’s straight out of a child’s storybook. Besides, he doesn’t want to be a burden. So he goes back to work and tries to pretend nothing is wrong. He avoids his family in the fields despite how much it pains him not to see his little brother in particular.

His organs convulse around the roots, trying to reject them. He’s much sweatier and shakier than usual by the end of the day. He picks at his dinner, unable to work up much of an appetite when at any point he could cough and choke on it. Besides, it’s salad, and that hardly seems appetising given his plant-related condition.

He stacks the gossifleur petals in a neat little pile beside his plate, red, yellow, red, red, yellow, yellow...

He calls Nessa on the day next appointed for their lesson together.

"Nessa, I can't swim today. I'm sick." His voice sounds rough thanks to all the coughing and irritation to his throat; like he swallowed a fistful of bark.

“Sorry to hear that.” Her own voice is clear as water. “Want to rain check ‘til the weekend?”

The roots squeeze sharply around his insides and he gags on a flower petal. It’s then that he connects Nessa and the mysterious illness in his mind. It seems to flare up worse than ever at the sound of her voice.

He licks his lips and says, “I might need longer than that.”

As if to punctuate the statement, he has another round of coughing and throbbing in his chest.

He makes a sound like a slowly dying pokémon as he attempts to fight through the pain and Nessa says, “I’m coming over.”

“No, don’t! It’s... it’s catching.”

It probably isn’t, but what if—?

She ends up coming over anyway to drop off some soup on his porch, but she doesn’t see Milo himself. Which is good, because he’s a state, greyish-pale and drenched in sweat. He peers between his curtains after her, swallowing. He doesn’t want her to worry.

Even dressed down in street clothes she’s beautiful, a model in stance if not in attire. She hangs around in the garden for a bit, casting glances at his house and occasionally bending over to smell flowers. She seems to particularly like the sweet alyssums. He ought to bring her some if—when—he gets better.

He waits for her to leave before he goes to retrieve the soup. She left him a get well card alongside it that she must have bought in Hulbury based on the oceanic theme. Her message is brief but thoughtful and includes a doodle of a drednaw roaring, presumably to scare off his illness.

As he looks at it, he gets an additional note in the form of a text on his phone— _get well soon, big guy_ —that makes him smile even as he gets the telltale tickle in the back of his throat that signifies he’s about to have another coughing fit.

He takes time off from his gym. The thought of all the disappointed challengers, new trainers, practically still babes, makes his chest clench with guilt. Even so, he can’t imagine hacking up flower petals on live TV would go over well. He can already see the gossip rags in his mind that would accuse him of eating gossifleurs. What would Nessa think?

What can only be more roots twist between his ribs and around his heart and lungs.

Milo stays in bed holding the crowns of both of his eldegosses in shifts, cuddling them in an attempt to drive out or at least distract from the pain. He coughs up a bucketful of petals on his female eldegosses’ cotton. He dimly realises there’s the tang of blood mixed in with the taste of the petals.

She cries out and flinches away, then cuddles closer to him, tucking her little face against his shoulder.

He stares in horror at the mess he’s made of her, red and yellow stark against her white crown. “Oh, lass, I’m so sorry—“ 

He cuts himself off with another hacking cough into his pillow, spattering blood and saliva and sticky petals onto it.

He uses shears intended for wooloo to cut a layer of fluff off of her to get rid of the bloodstain. On his way to put the shears sway he coughs up even more mess on a wooloo.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” Milo chants as he shears the affected wool off of the wooloo and clenches the mess in his fist.

Then he crawls back into bed and cries. He cries until he chokes and has to reach into his mouth and pick the petals out of his throat. Even after doping himself up on painkillers, it hurts so much. Like his heart isn’t a physical organ but a big tangled mess of emotion lodged inside of him.

Milo tells his male eldegoss sing him to sleep because he doesn't think he would be able to otherwise. He has a dream-turned-nightmare where he kisses Nessa until her mouth starts to taste like the tang of blood and bitter petals.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Kicking off the new year with More Milo Suffering.


End file.
